Nature and the planet · three GPS tracks

Where does a stork go in a year?

Choose one of three young storks tracked by GPS. Move the date and watch the journey build, one daily position at a time.

365 projects about nature and the planet

Three individuals · three tracksGPS · 2013–14

Each point comes from a published daily GPS fix. The line connects them so the route can be read.

Position on2014-07-12

Distance travelled23,674 km

Tracked birdRussia, near Moscow

Choose a dayone fix per day

Projects related to this route

The storks that leave: how Romania's storks reach Africa Common swifts: how long they stay airborne, where Romania's swifts winter, when they return The life of a London eel: from the Sargasso Sea to the River Wandle, and back

01 / One bird

Three journeys, three young storks.

Storks from Russia, Poland and Germany were tracked. Their routes reach South Africa, Zimbabwe and Morocco. Choose a bird or scroll to this part of the page to follow its positions.

02 / Different routes

One map does not show a single journey for the species.

These three routes belong to individuals tracked for that study. Their differences are visible; three birds do not represent every stork, and they are not evidence about storks ringed in Romania.

The woodpeckers of Băneasa Forest: seven species on the edge of Bucharest, each with its own sound Listen to the wetland that grew in Ceaușescu's lake Birds of the Delta: Seasons, Species, and Ethics

03 / Wintering places

A route makes sense alongside the places along it.

Forests, wetlands, rivers and fields support other lives. The projects below show what researchers measured, what visitors can observe and where the evidence has limits.

Carpathian Bears: The Libearty Sanctuary and Field Ethics Bats aren't blind, but they hunt by ear. Find the moth by its echo The 52 Hz whale, ‘the loneliest in the world’, and the blue whales singing ever deeper since 1963

Each slider step is a GPS fix from the Movebank MPIO 2013–2014 dataset. The line and current position use the source project’s map projection; no points are interpolated. This page does not show a GPS track from a stork ringed in Romania.

Nature and planet · 365 projects

The complete collection

The Romanian collection includes all 269 projects classified under Earth plus two guides to observing birds and bears. This English edition links projects that have an English page. The subjects range from climate, geology and water to the history of places.

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365 projects

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Earth systems
A wave crosses the Pacific: from a storm near New Zealand to a beach in Alaska
In August 1963 the swell from one storm north of New Zealand was followed for 11,000 kilometres, past Samoa, Palmyra and Hawaii, to a beach in Alaska. It arrived eight days later having lost almost nothing. Follow it in one continuous scene.
Earth systems
Three days from the Sun: how the solar storm of May 2024 became an aurora
In May 2024 the Sun threw at least seven clouds of charged gas at the Earth. Three days after the first flares they arrived and lit the sky as far south as northern India. Follow one storm from the Sun’s surface to the aurora in one continuous scene.
Earth systems
Vrancea earthquakes: how many has your town felt since 1980?
369 deep Vrancea earthquakes of moment magnitude 4.0 or more, 1980–2025. Modelled with a published law, 26 reached intensity IV or more in Bucharest, 20 in Iași, at most three in Cluj. Pick your locality on the map.
Earth systems
Where a bathroom scale reads least in Romania: gravity and air, from Omu Peak to Satu Mare
The same 70-kilogram person reads about 18 grams less on a bathroom scale on Omu Peak than in Constanța, and 20 grams more in Satu Mare: weaker gravity on the mountain takes 36 grams off, thinner air gives 18 grams back. The whole country spans about 42 grams, computed place by place.
Earth systems
Romania’s small hydropower plants: 370 plants on rivers, how much power they make and what they received through electricity bills
Small hydro plants with green certificates made 0.85% of Romania’s electricity in 2025; from 2018 to 2025 small hydro received 2.27 billion lei from those certificates. All 370 plants of up to 10 MW in the regulator’s register, mapped with their river, operator and the protected areas their river crosses.
People and places
The cleanest hour of electricity generated in Romania: the carbon in every hour
For electricity generated in Romania the cleanest hour is around 12:00 in every month. In July a wash started at midday carries about 150 g of CO₂, at 02:00 about 195 g. Pick an appliance and a month.
Life on Earth
The fish on the plate: 9 in 10 kg arrive as imports
Of a 187 kt domestic fish supply (live weight, 2021), Romanian production brings 18 kt. A counter of ten fish, the fish on the usual shopping list, and the river from 1950 to 2023.
People and places
Night falls: once around the Earth with the line between day and night
The line between day and night crosses every place on Earth once a day, at 1,670 km/h along the equator. Follow it westward for 24 hours, from the date line and back, and watch the lights of each coast and city come on as it passes.
Earth systems
Half a second of lightning: what happens inside a single flash, step by step
A lightning flash is over in a few tenths of a second. Slowed down, it is a faint spark stepping 50 metres at a time, a spark rising from the ground to meet it, and a wave of light that climbs at a third of the speed of light. Scroll to run the clock.
Earth systems
The Milky Way from your doorstep: where it still shines and how far it has retreated
Over 77% of the UK population can no longer see the Milky Way from home. Search any town to see how much light washes over your sky, how many stars remain, and where the nearest patch of true dark sky lies.
Earth systems
A whale falls: what happens to a blue whale after it dies
A dead blue whale sinks 1,675 metres, out of the light, to the sea floor. Sharks and hagfish eat for years, worms with no mouth eat the bones, and the skeleton feeds more than 30,000 animals for decades. One continuous scene, from the surface to the bones.
Life on Earth
Ammonites: every possible shell shape, and why some were probably never built
Three numbers describe almost any coiled ammonite shell. Move a point on the map of possible shapes and the shell grows on screen among 201 measured species; some of the missing shapes would have reached tens of metres.
Earth systems
The mountains in Neuhauser’s 1817 painting are 2–3 times steeper than the real Făgăraș range
Franz Neuhauser painted the Făgăraș range in 1817. Laid on the real Copernicus relief, the painted crest line comes out 2.2–3.1 times steeper than the eye could have seen, over 150 comparisons.
Earth systems
After Epiphany the frost came, until about 1987
At all 19 weather stations in Romania, the week after 6 January ran 1.7–3.6 °C colder than the week before in 1953–1987, relative to the station’s normal; from 1988 no cold step shows. Pick a town and see the winters of its nearest station.
Earth systems
The big one isn’t overdue: Vrancea has no clock
Since 1700, Vrancea has had 13 earthquakes of magnitude 7 or more, one to 56 years apart. Today’s 40-year gap has been beaten twice, and a clock fitted to 1700–1899 forecast 1900–2025 no better than chance. People keep a clock instead: every 4 March, the 1977 page is read 43 times more.
Earth systems
The Moon’s ashen glow comes from Earth’s clouds
The dark part of the crescent is lit by Earth, mostly by its clouds; from Romania or Britain in the evening, by clouds over the Atlantic and the Americas. A Californian telescope (1998–2017) and NASA’s CERES satellites both show a fall: Earth reflects 1.6% less sunlight than in 2001–2005.
Earth systems
Where is the centre of Europe?
At least eight places, from Estonia to the Carpathians, say they are the centre of Europe. Recalculated for 768 ways of drawing the continent’s borders, the centre always lands in Lithuania or Belarus, within 290 km across all of them.
Earth systems
Seals measured the ocean under Antarctica’s ice: three in four winter profiles
Under the winter ice around Antarctica (on the monthly ice map), 75.8% of the ocean’s temperature profiles came from seals carrying sensors: 61,648 of 81,328. Where the sea is shallower than 1,000 metres, 94.7%. Plus one Weddell seal’s winter.
Earth systems
When Bucharest sleeps: a magnetic observatory hears the metro
At Surlari, 30 km from Bucharest, the Earth’s magnetic field trembles more from 05:05 to 23:25, hour by hour with the metro and trams. 26 years of data, the clock change, Easter, New Year.
Earth systems
Shooting stars: which comet each one comes from, and when to see the 2026 Geminids
Every shooting-star orbit filmed from two places in 2025, drawn as threads around the Sun. The Perseids come from Comet Swift–Tuttle, the Geminids from an asteroid’s orbit, and 73 in 100 belong to no shower.
Earth systems
A painting from about 1745 shows how high the sea reached in Venice
The algae band Canaletto and Bellotto painted at the foot of the walls shows how high the water reached in the 1700s. On 12 paintings measured by Camuffo and Sturaro, plus the tide gauge, the sea has risen against Venice by about 74 cm since. The water rises on Bellotto’s canvas up to 2100.
Earth systems
A line of ash from Naples runs under the fields of the Lower Danube
39,850 years ago a volcano next to Naples covered the Balkans in ash. The layer still shows in the loess of Romania’s Dobrogea and Oltenia and survives in the caves of Bulgaria. A map, a cut-open loess wall and eight verified finds.
Life on Earth
What does my cat's meow mean? A game with 440 real meows
Listen to real meows from 21 cats and guess the situation: waiting for food, being brushed, or alone in a strange room. People do about as well as blind guessing, and a computer finds which cat is meowing far easier than the situation.
Life on Earth
The tiger mosquito in your backyard: where it has been found in Romania
The Asian tiger mosquito has been found in 71 Romanian communes in 23 counties. See the nearest record to your home and how mild January has become there.
Earth systems
Runway numbers are a map of the Earth’s magnetic field
A runway’s number is its compass direction divided by ten. The 13,389 runways in the world register redraw the Earth’s magnetic field with a median error of about a degree and fit the field of 2003 best. Since 2011, 97% of runways renumbered by one step moved the way the field drifted.
Earth systems
The Prut on the move: how far the border river between Romania and Moldova has shifted, 1984–2026
The Prut traced on every summer from 1984 to 2026 along the whole Romania–Moldova border: three quarters of its kilometres did not move measurably, and in three places the water took another path. Find a village.
Earth systems
Fog in Romania: winters have about half the foggy days they had in the 1970s and ’80s
At 34 Romanian weather stations, winter (October to March) had about 43 foggy days in the 1970s and ’80s and 22 in 2015–2025. The November mornings since 1973 that the archive holds, drawn at the visibility measured that day.
Earth systems
How often the weather forecast is wrong: rain and daily highs from tomorrow to a week ahead, in Europe and 48 Romanian towns
A rain forecast for the day after tomorrow comes true two times in three (65%); day five is the coin flip (52%), against rain on one day in five overall. The daily high misses by 1.5 °C on average for tomorrow and 2.6 °C a week out. Scores for 16 European cities and 48 Romanian towns.
Life on Earth
Small bugs in the house: identify by room and silhouette
Choose the room you found it in, its size, shape and colour, and get two or three candidates out of twelve flat-dwelling regulars, with the sign that separates them and the limits of description-based ID.
Life on Earth
Animal tracks in snow (Romania): paw or hoof?
Choose the print’s shape, claws and measured length. Compare the candidates among cat, dog, fox, wolf, roe deer, wild boar, hare and bear, drawn to one scale from checked field guides.
Life on Earth
What bird sings at night in Romania? A listening guide: nightingale, little owl, tawny owl, blackbird
Describe the place, the song pattern and the season, get the most likely candidate, and compare it with real recordings of the four birds heard at night in Romania.
Earth systems
The Black Sea’s oxygen now ends ever closer to the surface
In 1955–1964, oxygenated water reached on average 136 metres down in the open Black Sea; in 2012–2021, 88. The sea in 3D, from the Copernicus record and 2,279 Argo float profiles up to October 2026, with the dome-shaped oxygen boundary and the cold layer that has vanished.
Earth systems
The slope you feel in your knees: the streets of Iași, Cluj-Napoca and Brașov, in floors climbed
In Brașov, the shortest walk from Șchei to Răcădău goes over Tâmpa's saddle and climbs 77.4 floors; going round the mountain is 1,157 m longer, climbs 31.7 and takes 48 minutes instead of 58. Every street, path and flight of stairs in three Romanian hill cities, coloured by floors climbed per 500 m.
Earth systems
Romania's solar parks from orbit: the first wave, the quiet years and the second wave
Every ground-mounted solar park in Romania, mapped where it stands and dated from satellite images and OpenStreetMap. By mid-2018 there were about 3,043 hectares of panels; by the end of 2021 only 67 more; since 2022 at least 2,548, with more than twice the megawatts per hectare.
Earth systems
Swimming days on the Black Sea, 1982–2026: how long the season lasts at each resort
From Sulina to Varna, the Black Sea now stays at 20 °C or more for three to four weeks longer each year than in the 1980s: 21 to 28 extra swimming days. At Mamaia, Romania's largest resort, 123 days a year against 99 in 1982–1991. Every day of 45 summers, measured from satellite, on the real coastline.
Earth systems
What cooling a home costs the grid: the megawatts in every degree of Romanian heat
Twelve years of Romania's hourly electricity demand, set against the temperature in the same hour. Every degree above 26 °C adds about 130 MW on a summer afternoon, as it did ten years ago; at 35 °C, more than one reactor at Cernavodă, the country's nuclear power station. What changed is the hour: since 2023 summer's heaviest hour falls in the evening. Watch the July day year by year, then find your city.
Earth systems
The beech that leaves as boards: what a tonne of Romanian wood is worth, from sawn timber to chairs
In 2025 Romanian sawn beech left the country at €417 a cubic metre, more than half of the money coming from China, whose largest supplier of sawn beech Romania is. A tonne of wooden-frame chairs brought in 9.1 times as much as a tonne of sawn beech (€538/t). The whole ladder, from customs data.
Earth systems
White Christmases in every Romanian town, 1950–2024
The snow on the morning of 25 December, every year since 1950, for every commune and town in Romania. In 1951–1980 an average Christmas found snow where 69% of today's residents live; in 1995–2024, 43%. Bucharest had 17 white Christmases out of 30, then 11. Pick your town and year of birth.
Earth systems
What Romania weighs: everything built, set on a scale against everything that grows
Romania’s buildings, roads and railways weigh 4.43 billion tonnes; all its living plants, roots included, 1.73 billion. Weighed dry, the built side is 2.6 times heavier. Plants still outweigh construction in only four of its 41 counties.
Earth systems
The day the Mediterranean filled: the Atlantic breaks through Gibraltar into a dried-out sea
5.33 million years ago, according to the best-known hypothesis, the Mediterranean had dried down to a few salt lakes. The 2009 Nature model re-run on today's sea floor: up to 116 million m³ a second, the basins filling one after another, and the day the water reached the town you choose.
Earth systems
Romania’s widened beaches from space: where sand was put and how much of the new beach is left
The water’s edge along Romania’s Black Sea coast from Corbu to Vama Veche, measured from satellite images every 25 metres, every summer since 1984. Since 2015 more than 240 hectares of new beach have been made; in central Mamaia the sea has taken back 34 metres of beach, and almost all the new beach is still there. Find your beach.
Life on Earth
Paqe and Ana, two stork sisters from Kosovo: they left by different roads and were 27 metres apart again in Sudan
The lives of two storks from one nest in Kosovo, from loggers that recorded their position every five minutes: the roads to Africa, the 27 metres between them in Sudan, Paqe's month in Romania and any day of her life you choose.
Earth systems
Where a bottle thrown into the sea ends up: the paths of 28,728 satellite-tracked buoys
Pick a beach, from Cornwall to the Galápagos, and the real buoys that drifted past it since 1979 set off again: see which came ashore, in which country and after how many days.
Earth systems
The lakes that empty, and the lakes that fill with silt: Romania’s lakes from orbit, every summer since 1984
For four summers in a row, 2022–2025, the Landsat satellites found no surface water in Balta Amara, a steppe lake near Buzău in south-eastern Romania; in 2026 the water came back. The Galbeni and Racova reservoirs lost their water to silt. 402 lakes, every summer from 1984 to 2026.
Earth systems
Tropical nights in Romania: how many summer nights never drop below 20 °C, town by town (1950–2026)
A tropical night is one when the minimum temperature never drops below 20 °C. Galați, in Romania’s eastern lowlands, averaged 5.5 a summer in 1961–1990 and 28.9 in 2016–2025; Craiova 1.9 and 12.4. Every summer since 1950, night by night, for any Romanian town or village.
Earth systems
The ground under Barcelona, age by age: the Roman wall, the plain of 1827, the shelters of 1938
The French army's 1823–27 map of the Barcelona plain, laid on its own relief under today's city. Of 262.4 km of country lanes, 49.2 km have a street on at least 70% of their line today; shifted by 60 metres, the old map matches only 4.3–7.0%. Rambla de Catalunya follows the line of the 1827 bed of the Riera de Mallol. The Roman wall, 1,242 mapped air-raid shelters, and what lay under any address. In Romanian, English, Spanish and Catalan.
Life on Earth
Did humans kill the mammoths? Megafauna extinctions mapped: 175 of 329 giant mammals gone
Without the extinctions of the last 130,000 years, 329 species of land mammal heavier than 44 kg would live on Earth today. 175 are gone, and most of the losses follow the arrival of people far more closely than the end of the Ice Age.
Earth systems
Sundaland, the drowned continent: a map of the land between Malaysia, Sumatra, Java and Borneo 20,000 years ago
20,000 years ago the sea stood more than 100 metres lower, and Malaysia, Sumatra, Java and Borneo formed one continent. Its map, built from the real sea floor: pull the sea down, see when each road closed and which people and animals walked it.
Earth systems
The vitamin D winter: when the sun is too weak for vitamin D, for every town in the UK and Europe
In an average year, London’s sun is too weak for vitamin D from 13 October to 11 March. Dates for every UK town and any town in Europe, from 22 winters estimated by satellite.
Earth systems
Every June, the Black Sea turns turquoise: 23 summers seen from space
The Black Sea turns turquoise every June, coloured by a chalk-armoured alga. 23 summers from space (2003–2025), the strongest years, and how often the colour comes near the coast: from Romania's Vama Veche to Georgia's Batumi.
Earth systems
How old is the deep ocean? Follow one drop for 1,500 years
Two and a half kilometres under the North Pacific lies the oldest water yet dated in the ocean. It last touched the air 1,200 to 1,500 years ago. Follow a drop that sinks this winter off Greenland, down through the map of the ocean’s radiocarbon.
Earth systems
Is your house in Romania's official flood zone? The state's map over every roof
378,920 buildings stand where a once-in-a-century flood would reach on Romania's official flood map. Search any place or tap the map.
Earth systems
The last time it was this dry: recent summers against 2,000 years of tree rings
A drought atlas made from tree rings, from the year 0, set against instrument records for 1903–2025 and read with its own errors. Around Berlin, Warsaw, Prague, Budapest and Timișoara the recent four-summer run is the driest since at least 1500 in more than nine of ten simulations; around London, Paris and Madrid the instrument record already holds a drier one. For your town: the last time it was this dry. In English and Romanian.
Life on Earth
When the trees came back to Europe after the Ice Age, town by town
A map from 1,304 dated pollen cores follows nine trees over 15,000 years: birch and pine first, then hazel, elm, oak and lime; spruce probably waited out the Ice Age in the Carpathians, and beech came last across most of Europe. For your town you get the order the trees appear in and the map's usual error. In English and Romanian.
Earth systems
Last frost date for any town in the UK and Europe: how often it froze after each planting day (1950–2026)
For every town and village in Britain, Romania and Europe: every spring since 1950 with its last frost, and a planting day you move to see in how many springs a frost still came after it. Plus the frost nights in the coming week. In a typical Romanian village, frost followed the first 20 °C day in 19 of the last 30 springs. In English and Romanian.
Earth systems
Will the washing dry outside today? Drying times on the line, hour by hour, for any town
From the hourly forecast: when a T-shirt, a towel, jeans and a sheet will be dry on the line, and the best time to hang the washing out. Plus ten years of weather in 44 Romanian towns: a February day dries 2.5 times as much as a December day. In Romanian and English.
Earth systems
The tide in the stone: the ground rises and falls twice a day, cities and all
The ground under every town rises and falls twice a day, pulled by the Moon and the Sun like the oceans. In Bucharest, on a typical day it moves 28 cm and can reach 49; in London, 24 cm, up to 45. Nobody feels a thing: the wave is thousands of kilometres long, and the slope is under a tenth of a millimetre per kilometre. The page works out, on your device, how far the ground is rising right now in your town, how it moved on the day you were born, and when you are highest in the next 24 hours. You can drag the Moon across the globe and watch the stone wave cross Europe. Then two measurements: the pipes Michelson described in 1914 and the 26.7 km ring of CERN's LEP accelerator, which stretched by about a millimetre in 1992. In Romanian and English.
Earth systems
Bonfire Night: the night UK air monitors most often record their dirtiest hour of the year
Each of the UK's national fine-particle (PM2.5) air monitors has one dirtiest hour a year. Since 2009 it has fallen on Bonfire Night, 5 November, in 282 of 1,206 cases (one monitor in one year): more than ten times as often as on the next-worst night (27). At Liverpool Speke, in 12 of 14 years. An hour-by-hour smoke map of 17 Bonfire Nights across 165 monitors, and a page for the monitor nearest you. In English and Romanian.
Life on Earth
Valea Saulei, Bucharest's newest protected area, and the Tei-Toboc tree nursery, seen from space every summer since 1984
The ponds of Valea Saulei kept their green; the Tei-Toboc tree nursery beside them lost it in a single summer, 2015. Every 30-metre square, drawn summer by summer from Landsat. On 27 October 2026 Valea Saulei became a protected natural area. In Romanian and English.
Earth systems
Romania’s named winds, the crivăț, austru and coșava, measured day by day, 1974–2025
Every day of wind measured at 32 Romanian weather stations from 1974 to 2025, woven like a folk rug: one row a year, one thread a day. The crivăț, the north-east winter wind, comes almost as often as in the 1980s, but a third fewer of its days freeze: 41% in the winters of 1975–1990, 28% in 2009–2025. A 1916 folk tale in which it may only come out in winter turns out to be nearly right.
People and places
What state firewood costs near you
Romsilva firewood prices district by district: the same oak or hornbeam costs 225 lei a cubic metre in Călărași and 430 lei in Vaslui. Look up any Romanian commune. In Romanian and English.
Earth systems
The methane missing from the register: Romania's landfills seen from orbit
Satellites that photograph methane have seen plumes over 12 landfills in Romania. At Vidra and Brașov, the rate seen, if it held all year, comes to at least 11 times the amount reported; Cluj, Oradea and Albota reported no methane at all. Find the landfill nearest you. In Romanian and English.
Earth systems
Where the ground is sinking under Romanian homes: measured from orbit, 2020–2025
A map of ground motion under every Romanian town and village from Copernicus radar measurements, 2020–2025: where it sinks, how fast, and where nothing shows. Look up any street. In Romanian and English.
Earth systems
Winter sunlight in Bucharest’s apartment blocks: minutes of direct sun by floor and façade on 21 December
Minutes of direct sun on 21 December for 11,804 Bucharest apartment blocks, floor by floor and façade by façade, against the 90-minute threshold of Order 119/2014. Look up an address and see the whole year of your window. In Romanian and English.
Earth systems
Did the anti-hail rockets change the rain around them? What 30 years of weather stations show
Rockets are said to save crops or to dry out the next village. Rain from 160 Romanian weather stations, 1995–2025, around the country’s 119 launch areas. Look up your own commune. In Romanian and English.
Life on Earth
A slime mould's rule on a map of Romania: Physarum polycephalum compared with its motorways and railways
The rule found for Physarum polycephalum in Tokyo in 2010, run over Romania's terrain between its 41 county capitals: 83% of the network runs within 10 km of a railway, but the shortest possible network stays just as close (86%), and 59% of the country lies within 10 km of a line anyway.
Earth systems
Romania’s tailings ponds: a map of all 152 and the villages down the valley
The Danube basin inventory lists 152 tailings ponds in Romania, holding about 469 million cubic metres of mine waste, ash and sludge. Of the 33 with at least 10,000 people in their risk zone, 30 carry the condition score the method gives rehabilitated ponds, among them Tăuții de Sus and Teliuc, whose closure works were still to be done in 2020 and are now due by 2027–2028.
Earth systems
How many snow days Romania’s ski resorts get: Poiana Brașov, Sinaia, Predeal, Straja, winter by winter since 2004
NOAA’s daily snow maps, every day since 2004, for 21 resorts. Below 600 m, the last ten winters had 40% fewer snow days than the first ten, as weather stations confirm. At 900–1,500 m the average fell only from 86 to 80 days, but winter 2023–24 was the poorest of 22 and the last four winters all rank among the poorest seven.
Earth systems
Bucharest isn't flat: the Colentina lakes as a staircase and the height of any street, measured by NASA's lasers
Twelve lakes on the Colentina river, measured by NASA's ICESat-2 laser: the water steps down 37.6 m from Mogoșoaia to Cernica. Plus the height of any Bucharest street against Piața Unirii. In Romanian and English.
Earth systems
Bucharest seen by NASA's laser: the height of its buildings and trees, photon by photon
NASA ICESat-2 laser photons over Bucharest, 32 summer passes (2019–2026): a section of the city from Jilava to Otopeni, the height of its trees, and how close the beam passed to any address. In Romanian and English.
Life on Earth
How tall Romania's forests are, measured by NASA's GEDI laser on the Space Station
A laser on the International Space Station took 1,449,120 valid measurements of Romania's forests between 2019 and 2025. The tallest forest is in the Tarcău mountains; look up any town and see how tall the forest around it is. In Romanian and English.
People and places
The Black Sea at night, 1992–2024: the port cities that lit up and the ones that went dark
33 years of night lights on the Black Sea coast, from satellites, drawn as 33 rings on the water, one for each year. The coast Ukraine controls today had a quarter of the shore's light in the early 1990s and 3% in 2022–2024; occupied Crimea, Batumi and Turkey's coast lit up. Pick any of 31 port cities and see its light year by year. In Romanian and English.
Life on Earth
How a dog reads the street with its nose
In one experiment, six trained dogs told which way a person had walked an hour earlier from five footprints. You arrive at a trail from the side, as they did, sniff footprint by footprint and say which way the person went, on trails 8 seconds, 40 seconds and an hour old. Then see how a dog's nose sniffs, and what happened when owners let their dogs use their noses. In English and Romanian.
Life on Earth
Firefly Mangrove: 380 fireflies learn to flash as one
On a night river, 380 fireflies start each in its own rhythm and, with one rule and no leader, end up flashing together. Drag the slider to change how well they see each other, press and hold to carry a lantern they follow, and listen to the hum grow. In English and Romanian.
Earth systems
When to open the window in winter: the air is dirtiest in the evening, not at rush hour
In winter, 98 of 112 official Romanian stations measure their dirtiest air between 7 and 11 p.m., and during the day 106 are cleanest between 1 and 4 p.m. The night of 9 February 2023 in Bucharest, hour by hour, on a section through the city with its real buildings: the warm lid measured by the Băneasa weather balloon and the smoke held in the lowest tens of metres. On Sundays, in similar weather, exhaust gas falls while evening particles show no clear difference. The share of homes heated with wood shows no clear link to the evening rise; the shape of the land is more closely linked. For every station: the best hour to air a room.
Life on Earth
The atlas of novelty: where the specimens behind 269,284 species names were collected, and how long each waited for its name
Each light marks the recorded collection place of a holotype in GBIF, the specimen its species name rests on. The atlas maps 269,284 names from the holotype sample, from 1753 to today; syntypes and other categories of name-bearing type material are not included. The years run across the map, and specimens light up only when their species gets a name. Half waited at least 8 years, and the typical wait grew from 4 years for names published in 1900–1909 to 10 for those of 2000–2009. Pick any place to see what was named from there.
Earth systems
How many seconds each Romanian town gets before the strong wave of a Vrancea earthquake
Find your locality and change the depth of a Vrancea earthquake to compare estimated wave-arrival times. The page tests its model against seismic recordings and examines Bucharest separately. The five seconds before a warning is sent are an assumption; phone delivery can add delay. This is not an alert service.
Earth systems
Romania’s vineyards and the heat: where each grape can ripen, 1961 to today
The height up to which Cabernet Sauvignon gets the heat it needs in 8 summers out of 10 has climbed on Romania’s hills from 160 m to 463 m. On the country’s real relief, the heat line of each grape climbs year by year from 1961 to 2025. The vineyards stayed where they were; in the young vines the varieties changed, towards reds. Find any Romanian commune and see which grapes ripen there now and which ripened in the 1960s.
Earth systems
If the Earth stopped spinning, the oceans would run to the poles and most of Europe would go under the sea
Without the spin the seas would run to the poles: Siberia, Canada and most of Europe would go under, while the tropics gained land. Computed from the planet's real relief, with rock that flexes as the Earth's does, for any town. The famous map of a single equatorial continent appears only if the sea is made a sphere: three oceans would still cross the equator. And the Sun would rise in the west, once a year.
Earth systems
If the Atlantic current collapsed: what happens to Europe's winters, the sea ice and the rains
In a global climate model, fresh water added slowly to the North Atlantic made the current that warms Europe collapse. Year by year: March sea ice comes down into the English Channel, the sea on the American coast rises by about 80 cm, and the rains move south. The famous 2065 forecast, re-run and tested inside the model itself: close to the tipping point it hit, a century before it its forecasts spread over five centuries. And your own town, month by month.
Life on Earth
Who sings first? The dawn chorus, bird by bird, for your own town
Before sunrise the birds start one by one: the robin almost an hour before the sun, the chaffinch nine minutes before, in nearly the same order every morning. Scroll through one spring dawn with a computed sky and real recordings, then find when the robin should start in your town. In English and Romanian.
Earth systems
Halo around the Sun: why the ring is 22°, and what makes sundogs and the upside-down rainbow
The ring around the Sun is always 22°, because every ice crystal that makes it is a six-sided prism. In a sky traced ray by ray, millions of rays a second, watch the ring, sundogs, the upside-down rainbow and the “fire rainbow” form from the plates and columns of ice you choose. Then pick your town to see on which days and hours each arc is possible there, and send its sky to someone.
Earth systems
Barcelona's beaches: where the sea was in 1957, and where it is now
The water's edge on nine Barcelona beaches, measured every 20 metres on 29 aerial photos, 1946–2025. At Barceloneta the sea is where it was in 1957; at Mar Bella it is 270 metres further out. Across the nine beaches, the sand added in 2010 was gone within about a decade. The coast unrolled into one strip, year by year, and every beach with its own width. In Romanian, English, Spanish and Catalan.
Earth systems
Why does rain smell? The bubbles, the bacteria and the word petrichor
The first drops on dry ground fizz like soda: air from the soil bursts through the drops and throws a spray of tiny droplets into the air, as filmed at MIT. Try it on clay, sand and wet ground, learn where the earthy note comes from (geosmin, made by soil bacteria, which draws springtails) and how often rain falls on dry ground where you live. In English and Romanian.
Earth systems
When night never falls: the summer nights without true darkness, from Bucharest to Edinburgh
On 96 nights a year the Sun over Edinburgh never gets 18 degrees below the horizon; over Bucharest it does every night, and the line runs 33 km from Romania. 160 sky meters across Europe show where the difference really shows in the sky: only further north, where the Sun stays closer to the horizon. In Romanian and English.
Life on Earth
The dandelion: how far its seeds fly, and why they float
A dandelion seed head carries about 150 seeds. Press and hold the flower, or blow into your microphone; the model shows where the seeds might land under a chosen wind setting or a weather estimate, not a local measurement.
Earth systems
Old Orșova under the Cerna Gulf: 24 metres of water, 5 to 6 metres of mud
Orșova, a town in southwestern Romania, stood at the Cerna’s mouth. A 2017 survey measured the Cerna Gulf to 24 metres deep; a study reports 5 to 6 metres of sediment over the old town site. These are different measurements. In Romanian and English.
Earth systems
Sacalin Island between river and sea: what 41 summers of satellite images show
From 1984 to 2025 the western end of Sacalin Island moved 4.4 km west across 41 summer Landsat frames (4.8 km at a different water/land threshold); the area in the images depends too much on the threshold to say the island grew.
People and places
Romanescu Park is not the largest in Romania · Craiova
Guides call it “the largest urban green area in Romania”. Measured with one formula, Craiova's Romanescu Park covers 92.9 ha, well under Herăstrău. Lay it to scale over your own town, and see the plan kept at the Aman library, which does not fit today's ground.
Earth systems
Cluj under the lid: the winter nights when it is warmer on the mountain than in the city
On 34.5% of the winter nights measured by the Cluj weather balloon between 1957 and 2012, the air at 1,500 m above sea level was warmer than the air at ground level. Every night, on the real relief, up to 2025. In Romanian and English.
People and places
The seasons: why the year turns, how many seasons the world counts and what 351 languages call them
The sky gives the year four fixed points: two solstices and two equinoxes. People decided the rest: two seasons in Iceland’s old calendar, three in ancient Egypt, six in India, 24 solar terms in China and 72 in Japan’s old almanac. The page draws 21 calendars as rings of one year, shows why there are seasons at all, where the four words come from in 64 languages, and what the oldest text found says for eighteen stories about the turning year.
People and places
Enisala Fortress: what the sentries saw from the walls, above the Razim lagoon
The walls rise some 99 metres above the lagoon, in Romania's Dobrogea. From them, the watch saw the lagoon water for 25 kilometres and, south-eastward, the open sea past the spit — though the fortress never stood on the seashore.
Life on Earth
Yellowhammer song dialects: a map of Europe drawn from the birds’ own song endings
The yellowhammer ends its song differently from region to region. 1,178 public recordings, classified twice without knowing the place, on a map drawn from the birds’ own spectrograms. Tap a tile to hear the bird. In English and Romanian.
People and places
The Bronze Age collapse, place by place: 153 claimed destructions of about 1200 BCE, each with the clock that dated it
153 destructions are said to have happened at the end of the Bronze Age. Jesse Millek (2023) went back to the excavation reports and keeps 59. A relief map of the eastern Mediterranean shows all of them on a clock from 1300 to 1050 BCE and what dated each: pottery, a text, tree rings or radiocarbon. Only seven have a radiocarbon range for the destruction itself, 84 to 245 years wide; the page shows what they can and cannot say.
People and places
Stubble burning in Romania, 2012–2025: every field fire seen by satellite, day by day
151,479 fire detections on Romania's farmland, by satellite, between 2012 and 2025, day by day and commune by commune. After the harvest, on arable land, detections have fallen by 78% since 2022. In Romanian and English.
People and places
The Dăbuleni sands, 1984–2025: how a slice of Oltenia's desert turned green and what grows in sand
41 annual satellite frames, one per summer, over the Dăbuleni sands of southern Romania. The green that stays has grown by 10,540 hectares, from 2,437 to 12,977 — and what never settled into lasting green is, almost everywhere, the water of the Danube.
Earth systems
The Living Fire at Lopătari: what burns on the hill and how much gas escapes in a year
On a slope in the Buzău Subcarpathians, Romania, gas seeps out of the ground and burns — 21.9–26.9 tonnes of methane a year, by two measurement campaigns. Drill 3,331 metres down after the gas, then set the flame beside your own home's use.
People and places
Could the Dacian fortresses of the Orăștie Mountains see each other? Computed on the real relief
Of 15 pairs, one: Costești-Cetățuie and Blidaru, neighbours 1.6 km apart — visible on 1 m lidar relief over bare ground (Nogyi 2025), uncertain on this page's 30 m model. In the other 14 the mountain rises at least 100 m above the straight line. From the capital, Sarmizegetusa Regia, none of the other five fortresses can be seen, even from a 12 m tower. A chain of posts in between remains possible; the positions known do not show one.
People and places
Where people lived when ice covered Europe
Each light is a Stone Age archaeological site with a radiocarbon date from that time. The ice, the coasts and the lights change as you scroll, from 27,000 years ago to 8,000. Search for your town to see what stood there 21,000 years ago.
Life on Earth
The last day of the dinosaurs: the Chicxulub asteroid, minute by minute
The impact of 66 million years ago on one clock, on the globe as it then was: the shaking, the fragments falling back from the crater, the wave, the years of dark. The rock beneath London was about 6,500 km from the impact; the first tremor reached it after 9 minutes 57 seconds. With the times for 8,771 towns and cities. In Romanian and English.
People and places
Doggerland map: the land under the North Sea, drowned in stages from about 10,000 years ago
Doggerland joined Britain to Denmark and the Netherlands until the sea drowned it. A relief map of today’s sea floor, with 1,873 river channels, lakes and other features mapped beneath it, and the computed shore of any moment since 16,000 years ago. For each North Sea town, it shows how far away the shore was 10,500 years ago.
Earth systems
How often it rains in London: all 24,350 days since 1960, wet or dry
At Heathrow it rains, 1 mm or more, on three days in ten: 109 days a year. Paris, measured at Orly, gets the same; New York gets twice the rain on fewer wet days. Every day from 1 January 1960 to 31 August 2026 is one mark on a wall of days, any date can be followed year by year, and with a year of birth the page counts the birthdays it rained on.
Earth systems
London below the tide: mapped postcodes against the Thames at high water
At 10,528 of Greater London’s 177,041 postcodes with mapped ground, the ground lies below an ordinary spring high tide at London Bridge (3.9 m above Ordnance Datum). Explore the laser-surveyed terrain, compare it with the 1928 and 1953 levels, and follow the Thames Barrier’s closures, counted winter by winter.
Life on Earth
The woodpeckers of Băneasa Forest: seven species on the edge of Bucharest, each with its own sound
Seven of Romania’s ten woodpecker species have been found in Băneasa Forest, on the northern edge of Bucharest. Hear how each one sounds, with drum rolls measured strike by strike, and drum a rhythm of your own. With photographs taken in the forest in 2026 and a map of what has been built around it since 1990. In Romanian and English.
Earth systems
The hottest year of grandparents’ youth would now be a cool one
NASA’s temperature record on a globe, year by year from 1880 to 2025. Around London, nine of the last ten years were warmer than 1959, the hottest year between 1951 and 1980. With the numbers for 6,552 towns and cities and a family’s birth years. In Romanian and English.
Earth systems
Kilimanjaro, 5,895 m: the highest mountain in Africa, from its foot to the ice on the summit
How high Kilimanjaro is, what it is made of, how much ice it has left and how people climb it: the 5,895 m mountain drawn to scale, with its three cones, seven routes and the ice left since 1912. In Romanian, English and Chinese.
Earth systems
Mount Fuji: 3,776 m, the 1707 eruption and the 2026 climbing rules
Japan's highest mountain, 3,776 m: its last eruption in 1707–08, Hokusai's print, the four trails and the 2026 climbing rules, with a clock that shows where sunrise finds you. In Romanian, English and Chinese.
Earth systems
The height of Everest, 8,848.86 m: the last ten metres, then the whole mountain, drawn to scale
How high Everest is and what the height is measured from: the five published heights from 1856 to 2020 drawn to scale on the last metres of the summit, then the Nepal route, the Tibetan side, the river that lifts the mountain and the sea the metres are counted from. In Romanian, English and Chinese.
Earth systems
Iguazu Falls, day by day: the least water fell on Mondays
The flow of the Iguaçu River at the falls on 13,540 days between 1982 and 2019: floods above 28,000 m³/s, a month of drought averaging under 200, and a seven-day rhythm. With a day of the reader's choosing. In Romanian, English and Chinese.
Earth systems
Victoria Falls: how much water in April (3,007 m³/s) and in October (293)
How much water goes over Victoria Falls in each month of the year: on average 3,007 m³/s in April and 293 in October. The wall drawn thread by thread, dated photographs, Devil's Pool, the lunar rainbow and the 2019 drought. In Romanian, English and Chinese.
Earth systems
Niagara Falls keeps a timetable: from 1 April to 31 October a treaty doubles its minimum flow from 8 a.m. until evening
A 1950 treaty sets the minimum flow over Niagara Falls for every hour of the year. In 2025 the river below the falls stood higher by day than by night on every season day. A clock shows the schedule in force now. In Romanian and English.
Earth systems
Qinghai Lake: China's largest lake has been growing for two decades
Qinghai Lake measured 4,650.08 km² in September 2024, after two decades of growth. What satellites show, and what happened to its birds, its fish and its shores. In Romanian, English and Chinese.
Earth systems
Lake Titicaca: the sea at 3,812 m between Peru and Bolivia
Lake Titicaca, at 3,812 m between Peru and Bolivia: how high and how deep it is, Taquile island, the Inca origin story, the Uros reed islands, the pollution and the water level. In Romanian and English.
Earth systems
Lake Baikal: how deep the world's deepest lake is (1,642 m)
Baikal is 1,642 m deep at its deepest point. Its water column, drawn to scale: a metre of ice, the seal at 100 m, sea level at 455.5 m and three centuries of soundings on the way to the floor. In Romanian, English and Chinese.
Earth systems
The Yangtze on a painted scroll 800 years old: 240 named places, mountains to sea
A Chinese handscroll 16.57 m long, painted under the Song dynasty, shows the Yangtze with 240 names written in red. Unrolled from the mountains to the sea, beside what is there today: the Three Gorges, the dam, 1,426 porpoises, ten years without commercial fishing. In Romanian, English and Chinese.
People and places
The Amazon River: length, discharge, drought and deforestation, drawn to scale
The Amazon’s length, the Óbidos reference discharge from a 1989 study, the Manaus reading of 4 October 2024 and PRODES deforestation in Amazônia Legal: eight chapters drawn to scale. The Chinese edition covers energy and soy.
People and places
The Nile: where its water comes from, how it is divided and what the Aswan High Dam changed
The Nile carries about 84 km³ of water a year towards Aswan. How the 1959 agreement divides it between Egypt and Sudan, what the High Dam changed, and what Ethiopia, upstream, says in 2026. In Romanian, English and Chinese.
Earth systems
The Strait of Malacca: a long corridor, a narrow gateway
The Strait of Malacca is about 800–930 km long, depending on the source, and about 2.8 km wide at its southern gateway. What its numbers measure: 94,301 transits, 23.2 million barrels a day, 29%, 48%. In Romanian, English and Chinese.
Earth systems
The Strait of Gibraltar: 14 km of water and two currents in opposite directions
At its narrowest the Strait of Gibraltar is about 14 km wide. The Atlantic flows in on top and the Mediterranean flows out underneath. With a map for measuring the width, the Pillars of Hercules, the 1713 treaty and the shipping traffic in numbers. In Romanian, English and Chinese.
Earth systems
The Bosphorus Strait, bend by bend: 31 km between two seas, 700 m at its narrowest
The Bosphorus followed on the map from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara: 31 km, 12 changes of course, 699 m at its narrowest, two currents one above the other and, in 2025, an average of 110 ship passages a day. In Romanian, English and French.
People and places
The Panama Canal: how the locks work and how much fresh water a ship uses
The Panama Canal’s locks lift ships 26 m with fresh water from Gatun Lake and no pumps. One Panamax transit: 144,000 m³ on average in fiscal year 2024. In Romanian, English and French.
People and places
The Corinth Canal: length, width, history and Nero’s trenches
The Corinth Canal is 6,343 m long and 24.6 m wide at the water. In 1881 the engineer Béla Gerster measured the trenches and shafts Nero had begun on the same line: the line of the isthmus and the cut, drawn to scale, with sources. In Romanian and English.
People and places
The Suez Canal on the map: length, history, blockages and traffic, kilometre by kilometre
The whole Suez Canal on a satellite image at true scale, from Port Said to Suez (162 km of kilometre posts, 193.3 km overall): the works of 1859, the sale of 1875, the closures of 1956 and 1967–1975, Ever Given at kilometre 151 and the halved traffic of 2024. In Romanian, English, French and Chinese.
Earth systems
How blue is Bucharest? The city's colours, seen from space
Barely: 0.15% of the city's pixels are blue in the 22 August 2026 image. The lakes look green or dark teal; the blue identified on the map is on roofs and in swimming pools. The colour wheel shows the city in every other hue. In Romanian and English.
Life on Earth
The life of a London eel: from the Sargasso Sea to the River Wandle, and back
There are eels in London's rivers, and every one of them hatched in the Atlantic, thousands of kilometres away, where nobody has ever seen an eel spawn. This page follows one such life, step by step: the transparent leaf adrift, the climb up the tidal Thames, the years in a London river, the body's change and the leaving. At Molesey Weir in 2025, the volunteers' traps caught, on average, one young eel for every four and a half days of trapping.
Earth systems
The solar system at 1:10 billion: Neptune would be 450 m from the Sun
If the Sun were 14 cm across, Earth would be a 1.3 mm bead 15 m away, Jupiter at 78 m, Neptune at 450 m. Pin the Sun on your street and walk to each planet, with Voyager 1 on the same map and a printable class sheet. No textbook picture fits to scale.
People and places
What was the Great Brăila Wetland? A map of the lost waters
Between Brăila and Măcin lay a wetland of 149,000 hectares, yielding 5,117,567 kilograms of carp (Brateș and the Brăila Estate) in a single year. Diked in the 1960s, it is wheat fields today; only Balta Mică, 11%, survives as a nature park. Raise the Danube over the island and search your lake.
Life on Earth
How long can a seed stay alive? The Masada date, the lotus and the mummy wheat
Some seeds sleep a year, others a few thousand. Climb the ladder of sleeping seeds, guess how many wake from the bottles buried in 1879 and catch the impostors: the mummy wheat and the lupine.
Life on Earth
How quickly does a stag regrow its antlers?
A stag regrows its antlers every year. Follow a one-metre example month by month beside a silhouette of your height, then reveal its June growth rate. The chosen length illustrates a large individual rather than every stag.
People and places
Which villages lie under Lake Bicaz? Map of the drowned Bistrița valley
The model places 16 of 23 mapped sites under water in the Bistrița valley; the Village Museum records 22 relocated villages. Drain the lake, ride the river on a raft and find your village.
Earth systems
How fast are you moving? Earth's spin, orbit, galaxy and the CMB
You sit still, yet Earth carries you along: spin, orbit, galaxy and cosmic background. Pick a place and see all four speeds on a single ruler.
Life on Earth
Sunflower spirals: 34, 55 and the 137.5° angle
Each new seed appears at 137.5° from the previous one — the golden angle. Grow a flower from its angle, count the spirals on a real photograph, and see why nearly one count in five comes out different.
People and places
The meandering Dâmbovița: the river that looped through Bucharest, the 1880–83 canal and the double concrete river (1985–88)
A river looped through Bucharest, with 49 mills, islands and side arms. Between 1880 and 1883 it was cut straight; between 1985 and 1988 it was poured in concrete. Type your address and find out if you live on the old riverbed.
Earth systems
How long does it take to fall through the Earth?
Find your town, see where its tunnel comes out on the other side, and start the race of two fallers: one through the textbook uniform Earth, one through the real Earth. Which wins, and by how much?
Earth systems
Romania's record temperatures: −38.5 and 44.5 °C, with day and proof
How hot and how cold Romania has ever been: 44.5 °C at Ion Sion on 10 August 1951 and −38.5 °C at Bod on 25 January 1942. Both official, with day and proof — plus your town on the same scale.
Earth systems
Skip a stone across a lake. How many bounces can you make?
A game that follows the laws of physics: skip a stone across a drawn lake and count the bounces. What matters (tilt, spin, speed), what a Latin author wrote about the same game about 1,800 years ago, and the world record: 88 bounces.
Life on Earth
Spiders that fly: what lifts a tiny wingless animal into the air
Funigei are the silk threads of tiny spiders that fly in autumn. How they take off, what lifts them (wind, warm air or an electric field), what Darwin wrote aboard the Beagle, and what nobody knows yet.
Life on Earth
Crows remember the people who scared them: the Seattle mask experiment
People in masks caught crows on a Seattle campus. After 2.7 years, two thirds of the crows on the route scolded the mask. Walk a masked stranger across a square full of crows and watch the grudge spread; we found no test of Romania’s crows.
Life on Earth
Argentine ants accept strangers from thousands of kilometres away and fight rivals whose nests are 27 metres apart
In 2000, 33 Argentine ant nests along the coast from Italy to the Atlantic were paired two at a time in a small vial. Ants of one supercolony never fought; between the two European supercolonies a worker died in 235 of 241 trials. Pick two nests on the map and see the result, then what was and was not tested.
Earth systems
The Green Sahara: lakes, hippos and cattle herders where today there is only sand
On the shore of a lake in Niger, about 200 graves. Move the clock from 7700 BCE to today and watch the water, the animals and the people go, then watch the rain leave the Sahara on a map: it did not stop everywhere at once.
Life on Earth
Elephants may call each other by name
Wild elephants in Kenya seem to use calls meant for one listener. Hear a real rumble in a dusk scene, then see what 469 recorded calls showed, the loudspeaker test, and the 2026 reanalysis that says it is not proven.
Earth systems
The Earth rang like a bell for weeks
After the earthquake of 26 December 2004, which with the tsunami it set off killed or left missing 227,898 people, the whole planet vibrated like a bell. Hold a button to hear a month of the real record played back 500,000 times faster while a globe takes the shape of each tone; the Earth's breath, 0.05 mm every 20½ minutes, was recorded in Romania too.
People and places
Ice-age footprints at White Sands: someone carried a small child across the mud and walked back
Two lines of ice-age footprints in New Mexico, at least 1.5 km long, show someone small hurrying across slippery mud with a child probably under three, then walking back hours later. Carry the child along the trail, switch hips, set them down when they wriggle, then walk back over a mammoth’s and a giant sloth’s tracks.
Earth systems
A hippo under Trafalgar Square
A hippo tusk from the foundations beside Trafalgar Square, about 125,000 years old, and the real log of the fountain well in front of the National Gallery. Dig with a spade through gravel, clay, sand and chalk, see sea level and the water that, by a Ministry of Works drawing of levels from 1844 to 1937, fell 63 m, then switch the ground from metres to years: at least 45 million years of rock are missing.
People and places
Place of the day: guess where in Romania from the terrain alone
See only the relief around a place in Romania and take six guesses to find it on the map.
Life on Earth
The 52 Hz whale, ‘the loneliest in the world’, and the blue whales singing ever deeper since 1963
What US Navy hydrophones heard from 1989 to 2004, and what is not known about the 52 Hz whale. From 1963 to 2019 the song of northeast Pacific blue whales dropped by a third; type your birth year and hear a NOAA recording played at that year's note and at the 2019 note. In Romanian and English.
Earth systems
1816, the year without a summer
Tambora killed the summer of 1816 in Western Europe — but the reconstruction shows Romania near normal. Pick your town and see how far below average its summer fell.
People and places
How far is the metro from your street?
Search for a Bucharest street and see the straight-line distance to the nearest mapped metro station node. The map includes 57 stations; it does not calculate walking routes or distances to station entrances.
People and places
How close is a park to your street?
Search for a Bucharest street and see the straight-line distance to the boundary of the nearest named park. The map includes 169 parks and gardens; it does not calculate walking routes or access through park entrances.
Earth systems
Bicaz Gorge: Six, Seven or Eight Kilometres?
Six, seven and a half or eight kilometres of gorge, depending on how you measure. Fly over the real valley, in 3D, and see how the Bicaz river cut the mountain in two: four sectors, walls over three hundred metres, and an incision machine you drive with time. In Romanian and English.
People and places
The longest river in Romania
The Danube, Mureș and Olt can all be the right answer, depending on the definition: 1075 km on Romanian territory, 761 km among rivers without the fluviu, 615 km entirely inside Romania. The full twelve-river ranking, drawn to scale.
People and places
How much green your street lost
Type a Bucharest street and see how much green it lost in ten years, seen from space, in 3D: 3,267 streets measured from Landsat 8, 55 parks and 6 sectors — each street with its loss between August 2015 and August 2025.
People and places
The river under the city
Type your address and see where the Dâmbovița ran in 1871 compared with your home, with the margin of error: Pappasoglu's plan laid over today's streets. Plus the 1880 canal, the 1930s slab and the double river.
People and places
Where Romania burned
Search your commune or county and see on 3D terrain the 4,985 satellite-mapped vegetation fires from 2016 to September 2026: 600,814 hectares burned, every fire a column. In Romanian and English.
Life on Earth
The bison came home
At the end of 1924, 66 bison remained in captivity. Today's population descends from 12 founders. Follow the species' return to the Carpathians, from the first transport to Țarcu in May 2014 to the free-ranging herds, and learn how Europe's largest land mammal lives alongside people.
Earth systems
The town under the hill
112 metres under the hill at Turda floats a lake with boats, beneath a 90-metre salt bell cut between 1690 and 1880. Descend chamber by chamber — the 917-metre gallery, the Staircase of the Rich, the 1881 horse-whim, the echo chamber — in a schematic 3D cross-section, and learn why the 1075 document is a toll, not a mine.
Earth systems
The night a lake was born
In the summer of 1837, a slope of Mount Ghilcoș slid across the Bicaz valley and created Red Lake, with its drowned fir forest. Replay the night of the slide on the real valley, in 3D, and weigh the evidence: the rains of 1837 or the earthquake of 1838? In Romanian and English.
Earth systems
How far are you from the sea? Distance to the coast vs space (100 km)
Space begins 100 km above your head. For 80% of the world's land, the sea is farther than that. Type your town and see which is nearer, measured along the globe.
Earth systems
Wet-bulb temperature: how much heat the human body can take, and how hot your city gets
In the lab, bodies stopped coping at about 31 °C wet-bulb in young adults and 29 in older ones, well below the famous 35. Climb the thermometer, see who heat kills, and where your city's hottest hour lands.
Life on Earth
What happened to the forest near you since 2001
Search your commune, county or mountain and see on 3D terrain where tree canopy disappeared between 2001 and 2025, year by year, from Hansen/GLAD satellite data. The map shows the place and year of loss, by commune, county and protected area. In Romanian and English.
Earth systems
How does a hailstone get that big? Ride one through the storm
Pick the size of the hail you remember and see how fast it fell and how hard it hit. Then grow a stone in an updraft, cut it in half, and learn what is known — and what is not — about anti-hail rockets. In Romanian and English.
People and places
How high does the water reach where you live?
Type your village or town, drop the pin on your house and see the European flood model: 10-, 100- and 500-year floods on the Danube, Siret and Prut. Then raise the Danube at the Galați gauge and watch in 3D where the water goes. In Romanian and English.
People and places
Bucharest's red-dot buildings, one by one
Search a street and see the buildings on Bucharest's official seismic-risk list in 3D. Of the 2,798 addresses on the 6 October 2026 list, 2,626 could be placed on the map; the others remain in the table.
People and places
The 1977 earthquake, over today's red-dot buildings
Follow the 1977 wave across a 3D map of Bucharest, see the damage recorded for each square kilometre and search today's seismic-risk list. The historic record describes map squares, not what happened to any one building.
Earth systems
Drag the sky back 640 million years and watch the Moon change
The Moon moves away 38.3 mm a year, almost as fast as your fingernails grow. Drag the sky back through time and see the Sun and Moon at their size then, with a shorter day and different eclipses; every number is marked measured, counted in rock or calculated.
People and places
The mine waste that buried a village church. Watch it rise, year by year, from space
Geamăna, in Romania's Apuseni Mountains, buried since 1978 by the Roșia Poieni copper mine's tailings pond: 48 Landsat photographs, one a year, and terrain measured from orbit show the valley filling up past the church roof. In Romanian and English.
Earth systems
Where Light Dies
From the sunlit surface to 10,935 metres down: five ocean zones, the red light that dies first, the 2004 giant squid, the Titanic at 3,800 metres and the three crews that touched the bottom of the Mariana Trench — a scrolling descent, in Romanian and English.
People and places
Why are Wallachia's oldest monasteries where they are?
Drop three marks on the relief, then the charters place the monasteries attested by 1500, in documentary order. Test five explanations one by one: the passes, the Danube, the prince, Nicodim's network, the forest. In Romanian and English.
Earth systems
The trovants of Costești: do Romania's “growing stones” grow after rain?
The round stones of Costești formed underground from sand glued by calcite, and they do not grow after rain: rain only washes the sand from around them. Grow a trovant in a slice of hillside, make it rain and see what changes. Nobody ever measured the “4–5 cm every 1,200 years”. English and Romanian.
Earth systems
How many molecules of someone’s last breath reach a breath of yours?
Follow a breath around the globe in a model of air circulation. After complete mixing, the model estimates about one molecule per 0.5-litre breath on average, with an approximately 64% chance of at least one.
Life on Earth
Bats aren't blind, but they hunt by ear. Find the moth by its echo
Hear a pipistrelle's call 10 times slower, so you can hear it at all, and find a moth in the dark by its echo. Then a whole attack, slowed down, the moth that hears the bat from 30 metres, and where the 1,000-mosquitoes-an-hour myth comes from. In Romanian and English.
Earth systems
Did painters paint volcanoes without knowing?
299 sunsets painted between 1500 and 1900, laid side by side into a single sky. How red each one is was measured on the painting. See the sky catch fire after Laki, Tambora and Krakatau, where it doesn't fit, and why Munch's Scream was left out. In Romanian and English.
Earth systems
It is raining through you right now
Your screen becomes a detector: see the cosmic-ray muons crossing it, about 17 a second through your body. Then climb 15 km to where one proton becomes a cascade, watch relativity on two clocks, the pyramid of Khufu x-rayed and the neutrinos that arrive through the Earth at night. And how to see them at home. In Romanian and English.
Life on Earth
When did Kyoto's cherries bloom the year you were born?
Since 812, emperors, courtiers and monks have noted the day they went out to see Kyoto's cherry trees in flower. 838 springs, more than half known from parties under the trees, on one chart. Guess the day for your year. The trees now bloom 11 days earlier, and the record is no longer 2021.
People and places
Montjuïc stone: which Barcelona buildings used it
The Roman wall, the Cathedral and Gaudí's houses used sandstone from Montjuïc, the hill by the port. The LiDAR relief in 3D, a Roman quarry possibly older than Barcino and, building by building, how the link is known. Under the microscope, two of six Roman carvings "in Montjuïc stone" were another rock. In Romanian, English, Spanish and Catalan.
Life on Earth
Which is your closer relative: a mushroom or a tomato?
Vote, then look up one of 577 living things and see when you last shared an ancestor with it: 35 branch points, from chimpanzees to E. coli, each with the range the studies give. With a lesson plan for biology class. In Romanian and English.
Earth systems
Measure the Earth with a pencil
At your local noon, a pencil's shadow shows how far you are from the Equator; two shadows in two towns give the size of the Earth, as for Eratosthenes. Your exact noon, a class mode and what the ancient sources say. In Romanian and English.
People and places
Who ruled your town 100, 300 or 600 years ago? An atlas of Romania's history
One map of the lands of Romania and Moldova in 96 chapters, from the first traces of people to today. Pick your town and see, from 1330 on, who ruled it and from which capital; every map has its own link to send to students.
Life on Earth
How much plastic can fit inside a seabird? One chick had 894 pieces
Scientists monitoring seabirds for 16 years found 894 pieces of plastic inside one young sable shearwater. Guess the number, then see the count laid out on a tray. In Romanian and English.
Earth systems
The strait that wasn't there: drain the sea out of Hormuz and the whole Gulf, back to the ice age
A relief map of the real Gulf seabed that you drain by scrolling: 20,000 years ago the whole Gulf was a river valley bigger than Great Britain. Then, on the same map, what people made of the strait: the oldest pearl, the kingdom of Hormuz, the “Pirate Coast” and the truces, slavery, oil, the lines drawn on the sea, the 1971 islands, the wars and the 2026 closure.
Earth systems
The Longest Night
An emperor penguin father holds his egg on his feet through the Antarctic winter — 115 days without food — while his mate walks to the sea and back. Take the egg, stand the winter day by day, and hear two real calls at the end of the night.
Life on Earth
Thousands of starlings, no leader: how they turn as one
Each starling keeps track of just six or seven neighbours, near or far. Play the falcon over a live flock of thousands, watch a turn sweep through at 20 to 40 metres a second, and find out where to see a murmuration.
Life on Earth
Is there an alternative to shooting Romania's bears?
The case for quotas and the case for prevention, each at its strongest, checked against Romania's genetic census, 66 mapped attacks from 2024–2026, the studies on each method and what Canada, Japan, Slovenia and Slovakia do. With a model of the quota and a costed plan.
Life on Earth
When we craved passenger-pigeon pie
The passenger pigeon may have been the most numerous bird on Earth — flocks of billions that darkened the sky for days — and ended, a century later, with Martha dying in a Cincinnati aviary. The arithmetic of the vanishing: flocks, pies, market hunting and the lesson, in Romanian and English.
Earth systems
Jump into a hole through the Earth
A straight tunnel through the centre of the Earth and a fall of 38 minutes 11 seconds, computed from the PREM model: you get heavier on the way down, the trip splits into three equal thirds, and from Bucharest you come out in the South Pacific. With a real-time fall, antipode globes and straight tunnels between cities, in English and Romanian.
Earth systems
When Humans Vanish
Tomorrow morning nobody wakes up: eight billion people vanish and the planet keeps everything we built. A scrolling journey from the first hours to a billion years — the power grid, the flooded subway, the animals, the clearing sky, the forest and the last message, Voyager — in Romanian and English.
Earth systems
When the sun really reaches you: sunrise and sunset behind the mountains for any place in Romania
Almanac sunrise assumes a flat horizon. Calculated from the terrain for every day of the year: at Băile Herculane on 21 December the sun only clears the mountains at 10:54; 6.7 million people live where the terrain takes at least half an hour of sun on the shortest day.
Earth systems
Which mountains you can see from your town: a panorama computed from the terrain for anywhere in Romania
Type a town and see which peaks rise above its horizon and how far away they are. More than half of Romanians live where a peak over 2,000 m would be in view; from the Retezat you can see Bulgaria, from the Apuseni the Tatras.
Earth systems
Nine seconds between the flash and the thunder. How far away was it?
Divide the seconds by three for kilometres, and heard thunder means the storm can strike. With a map of your town.
Life on Earth
A five-centimetre butterfly. A migration of up to 15,000 kilometres. No generation sees the whole journey.
The painted lady links Europe to Africa in a relay of 8–10 generations: the month-by-month yearly map, the Atlantic crossing, true-size calibration and the Romanian data.
Life on Earth
Megalodon: how big the biggest shark really was
A megalodon backbone found in Belgium is about 11 metres long on its own. With head and tail the shark was 16.4 metres, and slimmer than a giant great white. Let it swim past you at true scale, see its tooth at real size, and the teeth found in Transylvania.
Life on Earth
What lives in a drop of water?
Zoom into five microscope photographs and try to tell a single cell from a colony or an animal. Discover branching algae and an almost transparent rotifer.
Life on Earth
Creatures that should not exist
Seven Romanian animals that defy biology — from the eyeless king of Movile Cave to the predator that grew 15-fold in 17 years — on a living map, with a quiz.
Earth systems
The northern lights have been seen from Romania. How many times since records began?
Four documented episodes in three years: November 2023, May and October 2024, January 2026. Since 1932, 23 storms have reached Kp 9.
Life on Earth
Three mammals live in the Black Sea. The seal is gone
The common dolphin, the bottlenose dolphin and the porpoise — about 225,000 of them all, by the 2019 aerial count. Hunting killed millions.
Life on Earth
A poppy is red to you. To a bee it is something else
A bee sees ultraviolet, blue and green, but no red. The red poppy looks ultraviolet to her. Look at six flowers through her eyes.
People and places
Who owns the water?
The BALA II navigation project promises to direct more water towards Cernavodă. Follow the water route, who can act and the planning sources. The chronology is updated to 10 November 2026; the works’ effect on cooling remains to be verified.
Earth systems
The Plough didn't look like this 100,000 years ago
100,000 years ago the Plough's bowl gaped almost twice as wide. Drag time across the sky, watch Polaris lose the pole, and meet the people who looked up then.
Earth systems
The cloud above you weighs as much as 80 elephants
An ordinary summer cloud gathers about 500 tonnes of water, as much as 80 bull elephants, and still does not fall. Weigh your own cloud, with your own weight on the scales, and learn what holds it up.
Earth systems
A drop in the Danube: source to Black Sea in about 32 days
About a month in an average year: three weeks in flood, two months in drought. Send a drop down the Danube, from the Black Forest to Sulina, on a clock built from measured current speeds.
Life on Earth
The storks that leave: how Romania's storks reach Africa
A stork from Russia, one from Poland and one from Germany carried a GPS transmitter for a whole year. One reached South Africa, one flew over Brașov, one stopped in Morocco. Follow their road on the map, day by day, then play true-or-false.
Earth systems
When will the sky go dark at noon over your town?
Pick the nearest town and see every solar eclipse it gets from 1900 to 2100: which were total, how much Sun was left each time, and when the next shadow comes.
Earth systems
The Mocs meteorite (Mociu, 1882): the stone shower on Koch's map and the 35.70 kg stone
On 3 February 1882, after a fireball crossed the sky near Cluj, thousands of stones fell: small ones at one end, giants at the other. Watch them fall again on the map drawn at the time, and weigh the famous “56 kg stone” back into 102 stones. English and Romanian.
Earth systems
The Berca mud volcanoes: why they are not volcanoes
At Pâclele, cones a few metres high spit cold mud pushed by methane from 3,000 metres down. No magma, no lava. Stand beside a cone, to scale, and see where the ground really burns.
Life on Earth
Can you get DNA out of a beetle trapped in amber?
At Colți, in Buzău, people dig amber with insects millions of years old out of the ground. Their DNA has long been gone, and the amber itself is Baltic amber's cousin. Drag the clock back and play eight questions.
Life on Earth
The cave bear: the half-tonne giant that ate only plants
Males weighed 400–500 kilograms and stood, by one press summary, 1.7 metres at the shoulder, and their bones say they ate only plants. Stand next to them, to scale, and see what researchers found in Bears' Cave and three other Romanian caves.
Earth systems
Which animals would beat you over 100 metres?
Pick your age and compare your 100-metre time with animal times and speeds. The cheetah’s time over a kilometre remains unknown.
Earth systems
Are you wider than a stork?
Stretch your arms sideways: that is about how wide you are. Compare yourself, to scale, with 11 birds of Romania, from sparrow to Dalmatian pelican, and learn why the heaviest flier is the bustard, not the swan.
Earth systems
How old is sunlight: 8 minutes across space, 170,000 years inside the Sun
Light flies eight minutes to reach you, but its energy wandered inside the Sun for 170,000 years. A random-walk simulation, a race with a neutrino, and eight true-or-false sentences.
Earth systems
Why the leaf turns red: three pigments, one short day
The leaf's yellow was there all year, hidden under green. The leaf manufactures the red in autumn, and short days give the starting signal, not the first frost. Mix the pigments yourself, see how much light Bucharest loses, and play eight true-or-false statements.
Earth systems
No two snowflakes alike? The 1988 pair and how a flake grows
The saying is almost true: two large stellar flakes, alike down to the smallest detail, have never been found. But one pair entered the record books in 1988. Grow your own flake from two settings and count how many fall on your street.
Life on Earth
The water bear survives space but is vulnerable to heat
The water bear survived ten days in vacuum. Heat can kill it: tolerance depends on species, exposure duration and whether it is active or dried.
Earth systems
What a raindrop looks like: sphere, bun, mid-air breakup
No raindrop looks like a teardrop: small it is a sphere, large a flattened bun falling at 31 km/h, and the giants break up in mid-air. Pick a diameter, see the shape and speed, then play eight true-or-false sentences.
Earth systems
The Black Sea has two floors. Nothing downstairs breathes oxygen
The top 50 metres hold oxygen. Below 100–150 metres there is none at all, and the oxygen-free water preserves wooden ships for thousands of years. Dive past the ships, down to 2,212 metres.
People and places
Chernobyl over Romania
29 April–27 May 1986: the cloud, the readings, the rules — and four days of silence.
People and places
The spring the water came
The rain, the drowned counties, the rebuild — and the dead have no single number.
People and places
Thirty centimetres of cyanide
One hundred thousand cubic metres, 2,000 kilometres, four weeks of plume.
Earth systems
Ciomadul, Romania’s “extinct” volcano, to scale
Ciomadul last erupted 27,000–32,000 years ago, and “extinct” only means 10,000 quiet years. Put the crater, the lake and your own town on one scale drawing, descend to the partly molten rock and see who says what about the volcano.
People and places
The black snow of Copșa Mică
Two works made Copșa Mică Europe's most polluted town: soot, lead in air, soil and children's blood. The figures, from the studies, plus the plume map and the lab bench.
Life on Earth
The cave that lives without the sun
Under a field near Mangalia, a cave with no natural entrance feeds 52 invertebrate species on sulfur and methane, sealed for 2.5 million years.
People and places
The night Bucharest fell down
4 March 1977: the ground under Bucharest swayed once every second and a half, close to the beat of the tall interwar blocks. Shake a 1977 street, see the fallen blocks and look up your address on the official seismic-risk list.
Life on Earth
Elephants, mammoths and deinotheres in Romania: what was found in your county
Bones, teeth and tusks of mammoths, mastodons and deinotheres have been found in 23 of the 41 counties. Pick yours, stand next to them to scale, and read what the original paper actually says about the skeleton in the Antipa museum's atrium.
Life on Earth
A blue whale’s heart can beat twice a minute
The heart preserved in Toronto was weighed at 175 kg and is about a metre across, far less than the car it is said to match. Stand beside it, put your hand in its aorta and hear it beat, from 2 a minute in a dive to 37 at the surface.
Earth systems
Oase 1: a Neanderthal ancestor 4–6 generations back
The remains of a man from about 40,000 years ago, found near Anina: 6–9% Neanderthal DNA from an ancestor 4–6 generations back. The Oase 1 genome, published in 2015.
Earth systems
Scărișoara ice cave: ice at least 10,500 years old
A 1980 guidebook popularised 3,500 years; the 2017 research puts the minimum age at about 10,500. Map, cold trap, chronology.
Earth systems
Where was your town 100 million years ago?
Pick a Romanian place and wind time back 250 million years. The ground under Bucharest lay 760 to 1,650 km further south, depending on which of three published models you use, and Romania rode on blocks that moved separately.
Life on Earth
The dinosaurs of Romania: Hațeg Island, to scale
Seventy million years ago Hațeg was an island. A fully grown long-necked dinosaur there weighed under a tonne, and a reptile with 10–12 metre wings flew overhead. Stand next to them, to scale, and see on the map where the bones came from.
Earth systems
PAP 21, PP 5, C/PAP 84 on your packaging — what each one means
Type the code on your packaging — PAP 21, PP 5, C/PAP 84 — and get what it is made of, whether it is one material or a composite, and what the code cannot tell you.
Earth systems
The other side of the Moon: why it looks so different, and who has landed there
Turn a globe of the Moon and watch the dark seas almost disappear: they cover 30% of the near side and 2% of the far side. With a map of crust thickness, the South Pole–Aitken basin, the places where Chang’e 4 and Chang’e 6 landed, and what the first samples brought back from there say.
Earth systems
Your climate has moved — Marius Comper
Compare your Romanian locality’s summers with Europe in 1971–1990. An interactive ERA5 atlas of temperature and rainfall.
Earth systems
Where does the rain here go? — The path of rain
At Arad, the Mureș flows west: through the Tisza, then into the Danube and the Black Sea. Search for a river or pick a place to follow the water, then discover the land that feeds it.
Earth systems
The North That Moves
A compass for the wandering north magnetic pole: 36 kilometres in one year, a NOAA/BGS model, and two norths that separate over time.
Earth systems
We Never See the Planets
A planet becomes visible through the light it removes. Move a planet across a star and see the signal, then choose a real world from NASA's archive.
People and places
Nineteen hundred years separated a Roman sentence from a scientific citation
Pliny the Elder wrote about elephants and the moon in AD 77. An American psychologist cited the story as scientific evidence in 1977 — exactly nineteen hundred years later. Along the way, someone added a branch that appears in neither source.
People and places
Emptying of people, not of homes
Of 1,979 Romanian localities that had fewer residents in 2020 than in 2000, 1,556 have more dwellings. Look up your own place and see on a satellite image how much ground under buildings was added.
People and places
Which sources of pollution are in your locality? Romania’s industrial facilities map
Search a Romanian locality for Seveso sites, IPPC installations, major polluters, air and water releases and waste transfers in official registers.
Earth systems
The frozen Danube at Tulcea, 1836–2016
At Tulcea, ice on the Danube was logged for 180 winters in a row: four winters in five froze before 1950, 10 in 66 after. Type your family's birth years and the river replays every winter of your lives.
People and places
Romania has 11 UNESCO sites. The map shows 323 places.
A map of Romania's UNESCO World Heritage brings together all 11 sites and their 323 places, with inscription year, criteria, area and conservation status.
People and places
Type your town. See how hard the ground shakes there.
Look up any of Romania's 3,181 localities in the official RTC 18-2026 seismic-hazard table and see its PGA value, national position and comparison with another locality.
Life on Earth
The “Old Man of the Carpathians” is 900 years old in the papers and about 560 by radiocarbon dating. The oldest dated oak in Romania stands 190 kilometres to the north.
A map of Romania's oldest trees: 5,703 measured ancient trees with species, girth, county and indicative age, the four radiocarbon-dated oaks and three other dated trees, and the centuries-old tree nearest to you.
Life on Earth
All the virgin forest Romania has catalogued is smaller than Bucharest
A map of the 448 virgin and quasi-virgin forests in Romania's national catalogue, the eight Romanian UNESCO components, the catalogue's growth since 2016 and their legal protection.
People and places
A natural park's buffer zone allows clear-cutting. A national park's forbids it.
The law divides every Romanian national and natural park into four zones with different logging rules. The map brings together the law and the approving act for each of the 29 parks.
People and places
The Sea That Vanished
Seventeen million years on one slider: the Badenian sea, the giant lake, the drying that emptied it and today's Black Sea, over a faintly visible Romania, with every county cut along the maps.
People and places
Romania, 20,000 Years Ago
Drag the clock through the last 20,000 years: shoreline, glaciers, steppe and forest, a Danube without a delta, dated human sites and vanished megafauna, with your town pinned.
People and places
What Is Still Standing
A thousand years of buildings on one map, with a time slider, and the oldest thing still standing in each of the 5,672 localities on the list.
People and places
The Oil Roads of Prahova Valley
Nineteenth-century crude carts, the 1943 low-level air war, and historical pipeline webs cutting through family yards in Prahova Valley.
People and places
After the last tonne
What must keep working after a mine closes: the water route, the services requested and what remains unknown beyond the notices’ 48-month horizon.
Earth systems
How many stars can still be seen from Romania's cities
The model combines Globe at Night observations with estimates from satellite-observed night light. It gives one estimate at an assigned point for each of Romania’s 3,181 municipalities, towns and communes; villages within a commune have no separate results. In Bucharest, observers reported a median of 34 stars, compared with about 3,000 under a natural sky.
Earth systems
Air in ice has two ages
The core aligns 834 stops with ice age, air age and measured CO₂, from 137 years to nearly 800,000 years.
Earth systems
Animal vision: how fast flicker becomes steady light
At what frequency does a flickering light look steady? Compare 11 published animal values, with their conditions and sources, alongside a sampling diagram slowed tenfold. A flicker threshold does not count visual frames per second, and 60 Hz is only the calculation reference.
Earth systems
91 percent of people live south of Bucharest
91.0% of people in the 2020 grid live south of 44.43° N. The midpoint sits at 25.4° N.
Earth systems
A Cup of Coffee Asks for 140 Litres
125 ml reach the cup; the global-average coffee footprint is about 140 L.
Earth systems
Five Hundred Tonnes in a Clear Sky
A standard 1 km³ cumulus cloud holds 500 tonnes of liquid water. Dispersal into 119 quadrillion droplets caps settling speed at 1.2 cm/s, allowing rising thermal currents to support the entire mass.
Earth systems
Forty-nine millimetres
At Constanța the astronomical tide rises 49.5 mm on average. At Cape d'Or, in the Bay of Fundy, the same Moon lifts 10.11 m: 204.2 times the Romanian range.
Earth systems
The Horizon That Lies
150 km to the Bucegi Mountains; the peak’s own horizon reaches 43 km farther, without the observer’s altitude.
Life on Earth
Living carbon
Cattle weigh 30 million tonnes more than all humans. Pigs weigh 1.8 times every wild land mammal. Wildness holds 4.2% of mammal carbon.
Earth systems
The Deep Ocean Highway
The ocean can guide sound over vast distances. In 1991, a signal sent from near Heard Island was received in Bermuda, roughly 16,000 kilometres away.
Earth systems
The Year That Repeats
Align two ash cores from Hoot Woods and see how the same ring trace fixes the years 1940–1949. NOAA measurements give a correlation of r = 0.903.
Life on Earth
The Billion Heartbeats · How Heart Rate Relates to Lifespan
Compare mammalian heart rates and lifespans, then try a constant-rate calculation. Cross-species estimates describe patterns; they do not establish a fixed lifetime number of heartbeats for any individual.
Earth systems
Straight Down · A hundred and thirty-six kilometres under Vrancea
Romania's big earthquakes happen between 61 and 184 kilometres below Vrancea. On the map, Bucharest was 4.67 times farther from the 1977 epicentre than Focșani. Through the crust, 1.84 times.
Earth systems
Roots beneath the plate
Lift the food supply of 177 countries and trace their crops to their primary regions of diversity.
Earth systems
100 metres can mean 54.7
100 metres can mean 54.7.
Life on Earth
A Titanosaur Under a Tonne and a Flying Reptile With a Small Plane's Wingspan
An island the size of Hispaniola sat under present-day Transylvania for 70 million years. Its herbivorous dinosaurs shrank, while a flying reptile grew to the size of a small airplane.
Earth systems
The Dandelion and the Ring in the Air
Turn a solid disk into a dandelion pappus and watch the gaps between its filaments maintain a separated vortex ring. At its measured porosity, the pappus produces more than four times as much drag per unit projected area as the solid reference disk.
People and places
The Ones Who Never Left
A 2025 genetic census found Romania alone holds over half the brown bears the whole European Union had two years earlier. An interactive map shows the year every other European country lost its wolves — and why Romania is the only one with no year at all.
People and places
The river remembered
Follow a 1541–42 descent from the Andes to the Atlantic, then switch between a conquistador's testimony and the archaeological traces of Amazonian roads, earthworks and settlements.
Earth systems
The Cat Without a Push
A cat can turn its paws down after changing shape in mid-air. Angular-momentum conservation still holds, and the two-segment model shows where the net rotation comes from.
Life on Earth
A Wet Mouse Shakes 30 Times a Second
A Labrador shakes at about 4.5 Hz and a brown bear at 4 Hz. The stroboscopic plate links that rhythm to the acceleration needed to release water from fur.
Earth systems
The Paradox of Romania's Coastline
Drag the ruler and watch the compass measure Romania's real coastline; the length recalculates live.
Earth systems
An Emergency That Keeps Coming Back: Karate Zeon's Eleven-Year Run
Article 53 allows no more than 120 days. Germany authorised Karate Zeon for raspberries against Drosophila suzukii every year from 2016 through 2026.
Earth systems
Why Sink Water Ignores the Hemispheres
A sink drains in thirty seconds. Earth's rotation needs nearly three hours of stillness to dominate the water's motion.
People and places
Wooden churches belong to the hills
The Carpathians are usually treated as the border between two building worlds. Wooden churches ignore it: their density rises the same way on both flanks and falls where the hills end.
Earth systems
When Ambient Heat Becomes Dangerous in Pregnancy | The Heat Threshold
A systematic synthesis of epidemiological evidence on ambient heat during pregnancy. How local climate, humidity, and gestational timing shape risk thresholds at 30.55°C, 34.11°C, and 39.07°C.
Earth systems
Sixteen Minutes
The sun reaches its true noon up to sixteen minutes before or after twelve o'clock on your clock. Only four days a year do the two match exactly.
Life on Earth
Second in hives, seventh in concentration
Romania has 1.7 million beehives, second place in the European Union. But hives per holding — the real measure of how concentrated an apiculture sector is — puts it mid-table, almost tied with Italy. Greece, with 31% fewer hives, holds nearly double.
Earth systems
Thirty-Seven Years Before the Cave
Emil Racoviță founded a cave research institute in Cluj in 1920. Thirty-seven years later, Bagameri Béla entered Peștera Vântului.
People and places
Vatra
Romania's 2021 census: 42.6% of dwellings report wood heat, and 4.97% have no heating at all. An interactive map of all 42 counties.
People and places
The oldest ruins in Romania
The oldest ruins in the country are neither Dacian nor Roman: they are Neolithic and Bronze Age fortified settlements. And the most heavily re-settled place in the list is a hill in Buzău county, with five villages and five cemeteries stacked on it.
Earth systems
A Hundred Times Rarer
The Moon has 5,185 confirmed impact craters wider than 20 kilometres. Earth, despite taking more hits per square kilometre, has only 52. An explorer with 70 real craters, from 200 years old to 2.229 billion years old.
People and places
Romania's Tallest Waterfalls
Compare total drop, tallest tier and free-fall for the waterfalls with the greatest reported heights, with the sources and uncertainties of each measurement.
People and places
Romania's Deepest Caves
The Grind shaft leads the ranking by vertical range, at 815 metres. The map and cards track ten caves and shafts, their length, explorers and still-changing records.
People and places
Where tap water comes from in Romania’s major cities
Interactive investigation of drinking water origins across Romania’s 10 major cities: surface reservoirs, karst aquifers, 100+ km aqueducts, hardness, and glass chemistry.
People and places
Transfagarasan: Is It Open? Season Dates, Transalpina Too
Is the Transfagarasan open now? Opening and closing dates 2015–2026, Transalpina comparison, altitude profile, fuel, the Balea cable car, and what to do when it's closed.
People and places
Romania Salt Mines: Turda, Praid, Slanic or Cacica? Prices, Hours, Verdict
Which Romanian salt mine is worth it? 2026 prices and hours for Turda, Praid, Slanic Prahova and Cacica, depth, temperature, what's inside each, and a verdict per traveler. Praid is temporarily closed.
People and places
Danube Delta: ARBDD permits, Navrom Tulcea–Sulina timetables, 2026 fares
The Delta access permit (5/15/30 lei), car, boat, fishing and photo permits, plus Navrom timetables from Tulcea to Sulina, Sfântu Gheorghe and Mila 23.
People and places
Show caves Romania: Ialomita, Polovragi, Comarnic — 2026 fares and hours
Three caves with official fares: Ialomita (30 lei, all year), Polovragi (20 lei, daily), Comarnic (35 lei, Apr–Oct, min group 5). Hours and measured drives.
People and places
Danube Cazane gorge: Orsova cruises, museum, 2026 fares and hours
The Danube gorge with published fares: Orsova cruises T5/T6 (80–120 lei), charter 720 lei, Iron Gates Museum (40 lei). Hours and measured drives.
People and places
Romanian seaside 2026: Mamaia, Constanta, Eforie, Costinesti, Vama Veche, Corbu — fares and access
Six Black Sea destinations, with sights and measured distances from Bucharest. Check the guide for published prices and road information.
People and places
Transalpina DN67C: south or north gate, segments, measured times, 2026 rules
How to drive Transalpina: Novaci or Sebes by base, 134.7 km / 3h39 traverse with no stops, measured segments, Ranca–Curpat 30 km/h, closed at night.
Life on Earth
How Long Do Seeds Last in a Seed Vault? What 40 Years of Real Data Shows
Frozen seeds can remain alive for decades — but not forever. Explore 40 years of real seed-bank germination data, see which crops lasted longest and discover why seed vaults must keep testing and regenerating their collections.
People and places
Rain after a dry month
At Constanța, after 30 days without rain above 5 mm per day, the threshold was exceeded within the next 7 days in 12 of 64 summer episodes. Explore the record and compare stations.
Life on Earth
The Garden: bloom the 3D meadow as a butterfly
90 seconds of flight: bloom 70 flowers and catch petals in combo until nightfall.
Life on Earth
Carpathian Bears: The Libearty Sanctuary and Field Ethics
Compare visits to the Libearty sanctuary with bear-safety rules in Piatra Craiului National Park. The guide also gives a preliminary estimate from the 2025 survey and two routes from Brașov; wild sightings cannot be guaranteed.
Life on Earth
Birds of the Delta: Seasons, Species, and Ethics
See when 24 Delta birds migrate or nest, explore three suggested trips, and read the visitor guidelines. The guide has no current population estimates and cannot predict what you will see.
Earth systems
The Danube at low water, 1840–2026: how often the river has been this low
Daily Danube flow at Orșova since 1840, 183 years: between June and September no day had fallen under 1,440 m³/s. In 2026, INHGA bulletins give 1,300 in August and 1,250 in September. Enter a flow from the news and see how often the river has been that low.
Earth systems
North Is Not a Place
An interactive explainer about the gap between north on a map and north in a compass needle.
Earth systems
The Same Year. Two Measures.
17,373 earthquakes in the USGS snapshot. The same year looks crowded by count and concentrated by energy.
People and places
A telescope in New Zealand: what it would add to a Chinese satellite-tracking network
A day of real orbits for more than five thousand objects: what a station placed anywhere on land adds to a Chinese network, where New Zealand ranks, and what the NZSIS report on Purple Mountain Observatory does and does not say.
Earth systems
One Clock, Many Mornings
What happens when the same official clock meets daylight at different points in the solar day?
Earth systems
England's 2026 drought: one of the wettest winters, then one of the driest summers in 190 years of rainfall records
190 years of English rainfall: winter 2025–26 among the wettest, summer 2026 among the driest.
People and places
How many borders away is the world?
Choose two countries, remove states from the route and find the minimum number of land borders between them.
Earth systems
The oxygen line
Lower a probe through 19 measured Black Sea profiles and watch oxygen disappear. At 100 m, one cast retained only 1.2% of its maximum.
Earth systems
Twenty-Seven Seconds, Then Silence
27 leap seconds kept the world's clocks aligned with Earth between 1972 and 2016. None since: the planet has entered a decade spinning faster, on average, than any other on direct record, and 5 July 2024 is the shortest day ever measured. On 15 October 2026 in Versailles, the CGPM adopted Resolution 5: UTC becomes continuous on 20 May 2027, when the maximum permitted |UT1−UTC| rises to 3,600 seconds; the current 0.9-second limit remains in force until then.
Earth systems
Before the S-wave
The P–S window matters when the next action was decided beforehand.
Earth systems
The Night That No Longer Cools Down
Tropical nights (≥ 20°C) are warming faster than daytime highs. An interactive explainer about recovery, Europe, Bucharest on the chart and mortality.
Life on Earth
When Work Requires Another Body
A visual dossier about animals people have used as sensors, engines, divers, agricultural workers, medical systems and search partners.
People and places
The City That Learns Before the Next Storm
An interactive matrix about heat, storms, extreme rain and the data that can guide Bucharest's response.
People and places
The Archangel's Sword
Seven sanctuaries, a geographic legend and a line that can be measured.
People and places
Day Three After the Earthquake
Bucharest has plans and named institutions for the first 72 hours. After that, responsibility for recovery becomes hard to locate.
Earth systems
Light at six
The clock stays still. Across the year, the sky moves that hour through night, twilight and daylight.
People and places
A plough, an auger and three saints
The same stars, cut differently.
People and places
Who Named Romania
A toponymic atlas of the country, dot by dot.
Earth systems
The Light of Your Days
A century of daylight, city by city.
Earth systems
The polar vortex and cold in Romania: what followed 42 stratospheric warmings
Every stratospheric warming since 1958, one row of Bucharest days.
Earth systems
When Romania's last volcano erupted, people had already reached this land
Pick your town and go down beneath it through a core of time: the stones that fell at Mociu, the Scărișoara ice, the cave bear, Ciomadul, the man from Oase, the Paratethys lake, the dinosaur island and where your ground lay 100 million years ago. Every layer, a page from the archive.
People and places
100 places in Romania you won't find anywhere else in the world
An interactive bilingual atlas of 100 singular places, natural anomalies, ice caves, archaic relics, and unique engineering in Romania with map and documented cards.
Life on Earth
Beautiful carnivores · Plants that hunt
Plants that snap, stick and suck animals in. Trigger a trap, explore five hunting methods and discover why a leaf needs insects.
Life on Earth
How does a hummingbird hover?
Pause one wingbeat to see how a hummingbird holds its position above a flower. Real photographs, an interactive explanation and the research behind it.
Earth systems
Romania's mineral springs: Why water tastes of iron or eggs
Three famous springs, three tastes: Borsec sparkles, Covasna brings gas and iron, Herculane smells of rotten eggs. Pour the blend and read the rock in the glass.
Earth systems
How dogs see: your face and your room through your dog's eyes
Dogs don't see in black and white, but they don't see what you see either. Turn on your camera and see yourself the way your dog does, rebuilt from measurements of dog vision.
Earth systems
After sunset, the sky is blue for a different reason
A sky computed from the physics of air, for your place and evening. Scroll and the Sun sinks to the stars; take out the ozone and the blue hour turns yellow.
People and places
The mountain with four skins
Under the quiet valley at Roșia Montană lie four mines, one over another: 7 kilometres of Roman galleries with a trapezoid profile, the centuries of fire and gunpowder, the 400-metre communist quarry — and the pit that was never dug, stopped in the street and in Parliament, tried at Washington. Peel the mountain skin by skin, in schematic 3D.
People and places
What you breathe on your street
A snapshot of PM2.5 on Bucharest streets on 30 September 2026 at 16:30. Distinguishes station readings from model estimates; it does not show current air quality.
People and places
The fortress with seven corners
From a plane, Alba Iulia is a seven-pointed star: 7 named bastions, 6 gates, 12 kilometres of walls over the Roman camp and the medieval fortress. Build the star bastion by bastion, in schematic 3D, and learn why the straight wall died, who counted 20,000 labourers with no ledger, and why Gate VII is no gate.
Earth systems
The gorge that swallowed an island
At the Cazane narrows the Danube squeezes to some 150 metres and digs some 53 deep: the Roman road with the plaque of year 100, the face of Decebalus carved in 1993–2004, and Ada Kaleh island with its 511 people, drowned by the dam. Raise the water from the Roman level to today's lake, in schematic 3D.
People and places
How much sun does your commune catch
Search your commune or county and see on 3D terrain how much energy the sun yields there, month by month: the 2005–2020 climate mean for a 1 kWp reference system across all 3,181 communes. Every commune is a column: height is the month, colour is the year. In Romanian and English.
People and places
How green is your street
Type a Bucharest street and see how much green the satellite saw around it, in 3D: 3,830 streets measured from Sentinel-2, 53 parks and 6 sectors, each street with its own share.
People and places
13 or 14? Peaks over 2,500 m in Romania
Some lists say 13, others 14: both are right, but they apply different rules. A 3D map of the 14 candidates shows where the count breaks — Capul Morarului, next to Omu, and Dara, right on the line; flip the rule and the map, ranking and collection rewrite themselves.
People and places
How hot is your street
Type a Bucharest street and see how hot the satellite saw it at midday, in 3D: 3,532 streets measured from Landsat 9, 60 parks and 6 sectors, each street with its own mean.
People and places
Where autumn has arrived
Bucharest surface temperatures on 25 October 2025: 3,530 measured streets, 60 parks and six sectors. Find a street for the mean around its addresses, its temperature band and the comparison with 29 June 2026. The data describe two satellite passes in different years.
Earth systems
Why Do Quakes Strike Deep Beneath Vrancea?
Romania's big quakes start 60–200 km down, in a slab remnant under the Carpathian bend. A 3D map and a schematic block show the six quakes, the 70×30 km nest, and why they are felt from Budapest to Moscow.
Earth systems
The Sphinx and the Babele: Wind or Chisel?
The Bucegi Sphinx and Babele are erosion remnants in Albian conglomerate, not carvings. A 3D plateau, an erosion machine with a time scale, and five myths set beside the geology — from Ruzo and Cinamar to 28 November.
Earth systems
The Growing Delta: Romania's Youngest Land
Five thousand years ago this was a Black Sea bay. Fly over the fan, in 3D, and see how the Danube filled it lobe by lobe: three arms, four lobes, old shorelines and a time machine showing the growth — and its braking after the Iron Gates dams. In Romanian and English.
Earth systems
Măcin Mountains: Romania's oldest mountains
Born some three hundred million years ago, before dinosaurs and before the Carpathians, 467 m today. Fly over the 3D relief, climb the eight peaks and rewind time: the Triassic sea, the Cretaceous sea, the emersion. In Romanian and English.
Life on Earth
Listen to the wetland that grew in Ceaușescu's lake
Pick a month and hear the birds recorded in Văcărești Nature Park, from 276 public checklists, over the city's hum recorded in the park. Below, the pit from space, 1984 to 2025.
People and places
The evenings the sun sits on Ceaușescu's palace
Seen from Alba Iulia Square, the setting sun comes down exactly onto the top of Bucharest's Palace of the Parliament on 29 March and 13 September. Look up your street and see the evenings the sun sets or rises at its end, in a view drawn from the city's real buildings.
Life on Earth
The honeybee waggle dance: how a bee tells her sisters where the flowers are
A bee back in the hive dances in the dark: the angle shows the direction from the Sun, the length of the waggle shows the distance. Decode the dance on real maps of Romania.
Life on Earth
Common swifts: how long they stay airborne, where Romania's swifts winter, when they return
Thirteen swifts tracked with sensors in Sweden were airborne more than 99% of the ten months away from the nest. Follow a swift's year on a globe, see when swifts are seen in Romania and how to help them on your block; no Romanian swift is known to have been tracked with sensors, so the wintering place comes from birds tracked in Czechia and Italy.
Life on Earth
Puppy-dog eyes: a small muscle that dogs have and wolves mostly lack
A small muscle lifts a dog's eyebrows and makes the eyes look sad. Five of six dissected dogs had it; none of four wolves had it as a separate muscle. What is known, what is not, and eight shelter dogs you can take home.
People and places
România ta: 3,181 Romanian communes and towns in nine numbers (the sea, earthquakes, mountains in view, hospital, first mention)
Type a Romanian town or village and see nine computed numbers, each from a different project: the sea, the earthquake design value, mountains in view, the nearest hospital, airport and castle, the first written mention, where the ground lay 100 million years ago, and your antipode.
Earth systems
Which way to point at someone far away: direction and straight-line distance through the Earth
Which way to turn and how many degrees to lower your arm to point straight at someone you love in another country. From London, New York is at 288° and 25.0° below the horizon; the straight line dips 601 km into the Earth.
People and places
How Bucharest spread into Ilfov since 1975: a satellite map of buildings, locality by locality
Ilfov now has more ground under buildings than Bucharest itself: since 1990, buildings have covered 42.1 km² of new ground in Ilfov and 11.1 km² in the city. The 1975–2020 satellite map for every street, neighbourhood and commune, with census population.
Earth systems
London Sunset Times 2026–27: When It Gets Dark and the Clocks Go Back
Sunset, sunrise and twilight times for London through 2026–27, the clocks going back on 25 October, and how many of your weekday journeys home start after sunset.
Earth systems
Krakatoa 1883 and Tonga 2022: the air wave, town by town
A globe of the Krakatoa (1883) and Hunga Tonga (2022) air waves around the Earth, with the hour each passed any town, checked against barograph records.
Earth systems
The Bega Canal: why it enters Serbia 5 metres higher than the river Timiș
Where the two rivers enter Serbia, 17 km apart, the Bega’s water was higher than that of the Timiș on 7,974 of 8,036 days, 2004–2025, usually by 5.0 m. The relief of the Banat plain in western Romania, a section across it, and any town against the canal’s water. In Romanian and English.
People and places
Autumn in Cluj, seen from a satellite: when the trees turn in each forest, park and district
The forests around Cluj, in Transylvania, lose half of their summer green around 22 October; the Botanical Garden almost a week later. A map of that day for 60 forests, parks and districts, from 263 Sentinel-2 images. In Romanian and English.
Earth systems
The seven hills of Iași
Iași is said to stand on seven hills. Measured on two elevation models, four separate by a pass of at least 30 metres, two are shoulders of others, and for Bucium the models disagree. More than half the building footprint area lies no more than 20 metres above the Bahlui.
Earth systems
The ground under Romania's towns: 26 millimetres a year north-east
All of Romania travels north-east at about 26 millimetres a year, carried by the Eurasian plate, measured by 93 GPS stations (global IGS20 frame). Relative to the plate, less than 1 mm a year remains, with a coherent drift south of the Carpathians. The station map and your town's number.
People and places
The Carpathians: vanished seas, ice and mountain citadels
18 documented places on Carpathian relief, from Hațeg fossils and Miocene salt to the Oase human and Dacian fortresses. Choose two points or towns to see the terrain between them and featured evidence within 30 km of the line.
People and places
Did Wallachia’s prince have a single capital? The places named in his charters
Argeș, Târgoviște and Bucharest were used in overlapping periods. Princely acts through 1550 also name market towns, monasteries and places still unlocated. The map follows documented issues, keeping proposed dates and gaps in the record distinct.
People and places
Why were Wallachia’s medieval market towns where they are?
20 places connected with medieval Wallachian towns in southern Romania, with 18 mapped. Place three guesses, follow selected documentary records and test mountain crossings, the Danube, customs and princely power against the evidence.
Earth systems
The north walls of Romania’s painted monasteries: rain, shade and what survives on 27 walls
Rain comes from the north-west, and at most of the churches in Bukovina the north wall has the least paint. But the same wall gets very little sun, and at Sucevița the wall most exposed to rain kept its paint. The comparison, wall by wall, then the same calculation for the walls of any house.
Earth systems
Romania's earthquakes: Vrancea, Bucharest, 1977 and your building
Every deep Vrancea earthquake EMSC has located since 1998, drawn to scale on a section to Bucharest, with rings for the large quakes of 1940, 1977, 1986 and 1990 and their waves. Below it, every page about earthquakes, from Bucharest's red-dot buildings and the 1977 earthquake to how many seconds you get before the strong wave, with short answers to the most searched questions.
Earth systems
Romania's loneliest place: the point farthest from any drivable road
The distance to the nearest drivable road, computed for every scrap of dry land in Romania. The champion is not on a summit but on a Danube Delta shore ridge, 20.9 km from any road; only 3 km² of the country is that far. Look up your commune's loneliest point, the champions of all 42 counties, and the longest walk out to a road.
People and places
Where would you draw the line between Romania and Ukraine in the Black Sea?
Romania and Ukraine both claimed 12,162 km² of sea off the Danube Delta. Draw the line where it seems fair to you, then follow the International Court of Justice through its 2009 reasoning, step by step.
People and places
Barcelona’s plane trees: a 15% target for 2027, still 27.7% of street trees
In 2022 Barcelona aimed to cut plane trees to 15% of its trees by 2027. Its quarterly register: 27.7% of street trees, as in 2022. A map of all 222,272 trees, street by street.
Life on Earth
The golden jackal moves north: from the lower Danube to every Romanian county, then to Arctic Norway
Romania’s hunting-ground managers estimated 7,566 golden jackals in 2014 and 46,645 in 2026. The map follows the jackal county by county in Romania and through the first confirmed record in 17 European countries, as far as Arctic Norway.
People and places
39 centimetres on the gauge take the Paris flood maps from 13 addresses to 953
The ten official flood maps for Paris, each tied to a reading on the Austerlitz gauge. At 7.58 m the water reaches 953 street addresses; at 9.10 m, 10,491. Search your address and compare with 1910.
People and places
Giurgiu–Ruse: for 59 years, the only bridge between Romania and Bulgaria
Romania and Bulgaria share about 470 km of the Danube. From 1954 to 2013 the Giurgiu–Ruse bridge was the only bridge across it. See the lower Danube in any year since 1409.
Earth systems
Within 44 km of the Black Sea, the Danube still has 290 km to go
Just below Cernavodă, in south-east Romania, the Danube comes within 44 km of the Black Sea (a straight line from the river to the nearest coast), then needs about 290 km more to reach it at Sulina. The walls, the 1860 railway, the Cernavodă bridge and the Danube–Black Sea Canal, dug twice, on one map.
Earth systems
Fly the whole Danube in 3D, then follow a raindrop to the Black Sea
The Danube's long profile and flow, source to sea: by Vienna it has made 76% of its 678-metre descent but carries about 29% of its water. A 3D map of 14,248 river stretches drawn as wide as their flow.
Earth systems
The chronicles' hard years, checked against the tree rings
157 records of drought, famine, hard winters, floods and locusts from the written sources of the Romanian lands (111 distinct years), set year by year against what the trees recorded. The droughts show in the rings; the famines are indistinguishable from chance.
Earth systems
Ten true things about the Earth that sound wrong
Thunderstorms that make antimatter, an earthquake that shortened the day, a sea surface that dips 106 metres below its reference: ten sourced facts about the Earth that sound wrong.
Life on Earth
The night birds: autumn migration over Romania, counted by weather radar
On 29 September 2026 about half a million birds crossed Bucharest at night, heading south-west almost a kilometre up. Romania’s new weather radars count them, but the European archive computed them with the wrong wavelength: the published numbers are almost 14 times too high.
Earth systems
Well water: why it looks clean and what may be in it
Nitrate in well water is tasteless: the 50 mg/L reference value, the section from latrine to bucket, the evidence map and search across 15,418 localities — plus the exact lab panel to request.

About the collection

This collection brings together relevant projects from the site’s library. Each entry has a title, a description and a link to its available edition. The complete projects carry their sources and evidence limits.

Reviewed 2026-11-10 · Collection as text

Sources

Flack et al. (2016), Costs of migratory decisions: A comparison across eight white stork populations · Science Advances
The paper cites the Movebank dataset DOI 10.5441/001/1.78152p3q; the three displayed tracks use daily GPS positions from that published data.
Movebank Data Repository · MPIO white stork lifetime tracking data (2013–2014)
Natural Earth · 1:50m public domain data